Terra Nueva

Doctor's Log 2x08

There are sentients suffering and dying during this war, and I can do nothing to help. Instead, I go from Bayside hospital to the outlying outposts and the Fisher King nest to Aurora and then its outlying outposts, to a short stint in orbit, and back again. Two weeks with Cailean and the kids out of every six. I’m tired, a bit saddle-sore, but hustling about keeps my mind off the war I can’t intervene in. It is somewhat a blessing that we hear the news by “telephone” from Scorpion Bane. It is not like Aute where there would have been pictures and interviews on every news link. And it must be far worse to be in the midst of battle in a city of telepaths, even if their data networks are down. The Tikket have not gone to war in two centuries – since Desert Bloom took control – I don’t know how they’ll maintain morale on any of the sides. Most of what we hear is about fighting in Radiant – a key city near the central mega-hives. When it falls, it cuts Desert Bloom off from a line of allies.

There are new people. We’ve been waking Freedom’s refugees from nano-status. There’ a mixed-lot – those desperate enough to be willing to try an untested technology in hopes of an uncertain refuge. And, like all the newly awakened, they’re stumbling into Terra Nueva’s many natural hazards and having to adapt to our air and pollens.

Food is a bit tight – more fungus, less real meat and plants. Housing is tight. We’ve had fights over space. The Belters have their own psychological and health issues. They are two to four generations from the Shattered World – we slept enroute.

When I’m in orbit, I hear the hopeful discussions of the new station on the big asteroid we flung in. With the Freedom’s tech, it’ll have gravity plating – no need to spin it. The techs chatter and gossip about the new factory, space doc, and adapting Janus 3 into the new station. Then I look through a window down at Terra Nueva and at Adams’ rocks hanging in orbit waiting.

And I’ve got a side project. Coral Bloom has agreed to send us one of her Echoes and an elderly Tikket who no longer has echos to help work on the nanite project. This is mostly one for the engineers, but I’m consulting as best I can.

AUD1 remains obsessed with trying to talk to the planet. He’s right. It is cool. But it has waited five years, it can wait more if needed. Adams, on the other hand, is obsessed with using the Freedom’s tech to make a new business suit. AUD1, Adams, Marak, and Vicinius hole up working on this for weeks at a stretch – they make progress, then hit a wall where they need to develop new software to proceed.

Things come to a head. Radiant falls to Scorpion Bane for the second time. Two of the Blossoms on Understanding Island ask for diplomatic protection. Marcus flys in an extraction team and evacuates everyone to Aurora. Watching the data centers, we see struggles beginning between the giant telekenetic bugshrooms and Desert Bloom’s fire ants, with the bio-tanks as weapons on one side or the other. Marcus flies a strike team down. I watch, too late to go. (And suspect my brother intended that.) A second Pegasus drops a team at a different grove. We watch the fighting. Freedom’s fighters make strafing runs on the tanks controlled by ants. The ants fight to the last – they don’t give up; neither do the bugshrooms in the groves where they loose. We send the Freedom’s fighters to aid at other groves. When the dust settles, a quarter of the Tikket data groves are burned. No casualties among our people – minor injuries. The Blossom refugees were watching with us at the Aurora command center. They’re shocked and unhappy. This attack was not an acceptable thing. Desert Bloom falls. We’re told she’s dead. Vicinius suggests we offer humanitarian aid. I send Madame President the plan I’ve been working on for weeks.

I’ve spent more time in Fisher King groves than nearly anyone else. The one Marcus dropped his team at was weird – the trees were in a spiral pattern and much closer together than I’ve seen before. I need to talk to the Bayside nest shaman, and probably suggest a team go look.

Marak asks about the fate of Adams’ rocks. They’re obvious to anyone in orbit, and anyone on the ground who thinks to look. The program will be transferred from Adams to ISP.

Since I have Madame President’s ear and she’s in a planning-for-the future mood, I ask her again about the Senate’s plans for advising parents about the gene-modifying-prion and the potential to vaccinate against it. I’m frustrated that I can’t tell my patients what I know and let them make their own decisions. She agrees to put it to the Senate with a recommendation to tell the people what we know and let them know their options.

Doctor's Log 2x07

[Encrypted as heck for discussion about war preparations and hints of our diplomatic backchannel]

One injection and uncounted tiny robots swim into my body, it’s odd. I can tell they are there, but it’s ignorable. Like getting a new filling – it feels weird at first, then in a couple of weeks you can’t remember it being different. They’re hard wired for this one task and will someday have to be replaced. I’ll study them. Take notes. See how they feel and work. Adapting them to the Tikket is going to take a long time – the biology is very different and we don’t know much about their aging. But I’m starting on feasibility research.

The Janus Three is headed out to the Belt to be the Belters’ base. I’ve got a psychiatrist trained to help Venus 3 on site, but I’ll still be in touch for sessions.

Meanwhile AUD1 and most of the Contact Team are trying to talk to the planet. It’s slow going. I swing by the lab when I’m on Aurora rotations to see what’s up and whether they are getting enough rest, but I’m not a mathematician.

We’ve got a team back on the Island of Understanding. Desert Bloom sent three Blossoms (black, red, and purple). The black one does all the talking, the others are “yes” bugs. No sign of Scorpion Bane or the Sands.

There are rumors of war. Coral Bloom reports that Scorpion Bane and the Sands have gotten very quiet on the psi-nets and dream web. From other sources, we hear that the rebels are preparing to starve out Desert Bloom. Our source says this has been planned for a while, but after we arrived. It’s our fault. This is new, unprecedented in Tikket warfare.

We meet with Madame President and tell her what we’ve heard. Do we intervene? With much reluctance no – we’re treaty bound to let things play out on the desert continent. We watch the bugaloo herds from space.

They begin to move. Nine hives have gone silent and left the fungal network. Coral Bloom isolates herself. Our contact is through Ozone and his echoes in Coral Bloom’s hive, but we’ll send a radio to her. Desert Bloom has vastly reduced psi power available to her.

The Tikket on Understanding Island suddenly suspend negotiations and go to their dome, their ants are on alert and a bio-tank has come above ground in a defensive position. Two diplomats meet on open ground – it’s not clear they are in contact with Desert Bloom anymore. We hunker down and watch.

With some effort, we create a telephone tree of primes and echoes to reach from us to Coral Bloom to Scorpion Bane. Things are going well for the rebels. Casualties but less than expected. New tactics from the rebels are helping. Desert Bloom responds with traditional Tikket tactics. Some of her allies have been removed and replaced with Scorpion Bane’s ally queens. The big mega-hive is cut off.

Do we take advantage of this to strike. No. We need to be sentients of our word. Instead, we watch, we wait, we prepare in case we are attacked. I start preparing for a humanitarian aid if we’re asked and can go. I don’t like sitting on my hands, but it’s not our fight.

Madame President has concerns that Desert Bloom might make a last-gasp attack on the data groves. They’re guarded by fire ants, who are loyal to her, one per grove. Marcus gets the job of planning a raid to defend the two oldest groves. He wants to fly it and probably will. I want to go – there’s no one better at getting field casualties back into the fight. It’s a risk, but it would be doing something.

For now, I need to be at Bayside and Aurora, working on the nanite project to see if it could be adapted in time to tempt some of the loyalists away. Eventually, we reach the end of what I can do with what we know. It’s feasible. We need to talk to Coral Bloom for more information on Tikket biology to see how to make it work.

Doctor's Log 2x06

It had been quite for a bit. Adams and Marak were busy with setting Freedom’s Belters in. Dr. Bow let me download a century or so’s worth of medical articles and manuals for the new equipment. I was in the midst of reading up on the anti-aging nanites, when the Senate wanted us to meet on Janus 2. This is the first time I had go through full decontamination and meet in paper coveralls. It is just wrong to see Adams in coveralls.

Coral Bloom told the Congress about a Tikket fungal network. They use it like wifi, but it can be used to spy. It could be nearly anywhere at Aurora and Bayside, but for places we keep scrupulously clean. Things are coming to a head with Desert Bloom.

The big problem is that the Tikket can’t handle dissenting thought. Coral Bloom expects Desert Bloom to start assassinating her foes. There’s nothing we can do about it – the cease-fire treaty requires us to stay out of her continent. That doesn’t mean that Desert Bloom might not strike at us, and that’s why the Contact Team is here – brainstorming.

Mass casualties are off the table – somebody finally understands the problems of killing one half of a telepathic link, never mind the backlash of many deaths on a race of telepaths. Vicinius and I pull together a status update on the psi-rat program. The rats were developed on Aute and scramble psi in a 2 meter radius. (I hate working around them.) They work for kibble and water, no rare earths needed. Easy to monitor. So far, it’s a pilot project, but anything that goes outside the lab is sterile. (The prion hasn’t started mutating them, but we need to watch out for it.)

The anti-aging nanites should work, in theory, for Tikket, but it’ll take a long while to adapt them. It would give the elderly queens an option besides depending on Desert Bloom. I’ve been doing some back of the envelop math about how I suspect that anti-aging power works. If Desert Bloom is supplying all of the power behind it and isn’t teaching anyone else (so she can’t gestalt), it’s a pyramid scheme doomed to collapse.

If we offer the nanites, what then? We replace Desert Bloom as the source of extended life? Do we want to prolong the Tikket gentocracy? Do our allies want us to offer that? At least the nanites aren’t a pyramid scheme – with enough rare earths we could extend lives of everyone. And that has all its own issues. I think I’m going to have to try the nanites. I need to know whether having little robots running around adjusting my body all the time is going to be distracting or distressing. And I can’t in good conscience ask the Tikket to try something that I don’t trust on myself. I’ll have Marak take a look at the programing – I like Dr. Bow, but I want to check for Athenians in this gift from home.

After the Volcano, we abandoned the Island of Understanding and never re-opened negotations. The treaty doesn’t give any provisions for another site, and doesn’t have any provisions for withdrawal. After hours of our usual bander, AUD1 breaks in – what does “yes” look like. If we re-open negotiations with Desert Bloom what do we want? To be left alone. Coral Bloom and the Tikket nearby to be left alone. Ideally, the Tikket to settle their problems without ichor-shed.

Finally, a plan. Clear off the Island of Understanding. With a meteor. Adams has been busy getting rocks into place as they mine out the big asteroid. Damn, he’ll be able to do it.

Give notice to Desert Bloom under the treaty that we’re going to await further discussions there. Move a portion of the Senate off planet during the negotiations. And start pre-planning a demonstration in case this fails. Other options are discussed. I still hate all of them.

And I still can’t get back to reading. Marak asked the Medynn to let us try using their gravity wave communicator on the planet. We try sending pulses in primes. Nothing. For days. Then the black crystals in the lab shift, and shift again. Repeating a pattern of primes. It’s very, very slow. The “plant” we found in the volcano seems to amplify whatever it does to control the crystals.

Finally, a rock falls. The Island of Understanding is swept clear. The Vigils go in when things settle to put up some earth-quake proof shelter. A violet Blossom and some ants arrives. We think Desert Bloom sent her because she had to respond by treaty. But Violet doesn’t see any point in negotiating with us.

Adams: (boiled down): We think you’re ready to declare war. We’d rather you didn’t.”
Violet: Your question suggests you have concerns about our success.
Adams, through the on-site team, shows them a map of the selected atoll. “We don’t.”
Our view shifts to orbit as six big rocks enter the atmosphere. The atoll and a couple of miles of rock under it vanish. I watch as it falls. If only there were gods left to pray to. But now, it is just physics. If this doesn’t work, many Tikket will die at our hands.
Adams starts to say something, and stops. I think Marcus kicked him in the shin.
Violet: We appreciate your concern. We’d like some time to put together a more formal delegation for extended talks.
Planet: (later) Seven pulses.

Lastly, on the eve of war, and neigh onto our fifth Landing Day, Cailen and I welcome to the world Ronan Theodore Flannagan Denhar. His sister, Elani is nearly two — how fast the time has gone.

Doctor's Log 2x05

It is good to be back home, and to arrive at about the same time I would have had I returned directly by Pegasus. I’ve seen Oceana – set foot on my third planet – and for the first time heard “city” used as an expletive.
We, and the team from Oceana met with Captain Rigel and the crew of the Freedom. A wooden star ship – who would have though it possible? With artificial gravity, no less. All our time spent in cold sleep, the Janus 3’s losses. Was it all for nothing, when our descendants arrive only a few years later? I guess not. We have begun to explore Terra Nueva, and have many skills for planetary exploration that Freedom’s colonists lack.
Adams proposes a grand tour of sorts. We travel to Oceana, let Freedom’s crew see their planet for themselves, bring a delegation from Oceana back to Terra Nueva, and have talks on Terra Nueva. Once of Oceana’s team will return to Terra Nueva with our Pegasus to make some arrangements for goods enroute. Freedom is much faster than a Pegasus – I won’t even arrive later than expected. Adams’ hope, shared by all of the Contact Team, is that we can stitch together our societies into one.
At our first dinner, Mehai (the Medynn navigator) stands up and delivers a toast. “To those whose path we have to find. We remember.” This passes around through the others. It ends with “We remember” every time. There is a sadness about these people – they saw first hand the destruction of Aute and were left behind in its birth.
There are but three Medynn, but they have a gene printer and plans to re-establish their race. They are travelling folk, distinct from the city Medynn of Mars. (Mehai pronounces “city” as if it were a dirty word. “We will take space back.” “We were raised to take it back.”
Those are our kin back at Aute and they are suffering. It would be suicide to go back now and try to take on the Vorta – they are well beyond our tech. But we shouldn’t abandon our kin even if it takes a century before we are ready to return.
Marcus is practically salivating at the new drive tech and their cyborg space fighters. I’ve been talking to Dr. Bow, their Medynn medic. The advances in nanotech are … the implications … I have much to study. Marak and Vicinius are busy trying to recruit the Medynn to their houses. The newcomers have no experience with Venus bots, none survived Aute’s destruction. They have no volitional AI of their own.
Marak has asked me an uncomfortable question. I’ve been scanning the auras of the newcomers, in part in concern that they may not be entirely what they seem. He rightly points out this is an invasion of privacy. I need to give it thought – reading auras is practically a reflex. I hadn’t thought how the patient might perceive it.

At Oceana, I’d forgotten how much Terra Neuva is different. The air here is all created and recycled. The gravity is higher, the atmospheric pressure thicker. All of the colonists have uniforms, all interact in a formal, military style. The Venus AI here have no rights – “toasters”. Venus 1 is formal, stand-offish. My door is open to her, if she ever needs an ear.

Once home, Adams makes introductions. The newcomers are not interested in meeting the Tikket or Fisher Kings around Aurora and Bayside – they’ve had bad experiences with aliens. Mehai is in awe of the Helios. Marcus wants to teach him to fly it. Adams is busy with diplomacy. Marak manages to toss a couple of monkey-wrenches into his plans.
Cailean and Seri have been working with the Tikket. The situation is unstable and will blow into civil war. The big question is how soon, and how can we stay out of the line of fire. Freedom’s arrival changes so much, if only we have enough time.

Doctor's Log 2x04

I am uncertain which of the Old Gods I offended that I find myself in the lava tube of an active volcano belaying my team into its depths. Marak was able to provide us with some Geeko grips, but even with them, AUD1 has fallen and is badly damaged. We’ll pull him up as soon as Adams finishes lowering a probe to the edge of the lava.

This is my own fault. Ozone had told us that the Tikket were likely aware of the volcano near Understanding Island and that its eruption was unexpected. The resulting tsunami was a surprise. The Tikket do have bio-engineered mining creatures they use to dig for minerals and to dig tunnels for their geothermal power systems. I had to open my mouth and speculate that Coral Bloom, among others, would have benefitted from the eruption that destroyed the diplomatic camp and killed several of Desert Bloom’s representatives. Of course, the Contact Team then were sent to see if there’s any signs of tampering with the volcano. And here I am watching the environmental suit’s alerts getting ever more emphatic.

And, of course, we find life even here in the lava tubes. Some sort of silica plant that grows here. We take samples. It does and doesn’t feel alive. Adams’ probe caught a glimpse of a bigger one at lava level, just before it failed. If we feed it heat (with a flamer), it briefly comes to life. Otherwise it is dead as stone. This is Vivarium’s domain – we’ll build it a kiln to study it.

[Later]
Home now, safe. I’ve got the usual pile of paperwork to catch up on and patients to see. I had set up a mouse study on the Buggaloo nectar to see if we’ve overlooked anything. So far, just fat mice.

[Later still]
Off to space again in the Pegasus to see what is coming from home. Oceana is also sending its own ship. It’s…wood? It appears to be part of a Delson tree modified with Medynn engines. And it launches space fighters. We radio welcome and greetings. They respond in Ancle — a human woman speaks. She asks about danger, safety, the Vorta (aliens that were seen on the old world). We agree to dock.

The gist of what happened to Aute.

The Hoth had made the Vorta leave before our launch. Farndell (a Hoth) hid our departure and route from the Vorta. In the last years before the hatching, there was bliss and chaos. Some fled to space. There were about 5-10k humans off world, plus the Medynn on Mars and some Ren on the Moon when it hatched. The Gemini station was destroyed. Ceres moved to the moon and blessed it with one last spring. The Delsun trees rapidly bloomed. Some of the miners went to the shattered world to mine it. The Medynn prospered.

Then the Vorta returned. Ceres kept them off the Moon. The Medynn’s Hoth protected Mars, but the rest of the system was eventually brought under their domain. They wanted something from the Shattered World and are trying to get something from the Moon — mana? This ship fled — there have 1k humans, a number of Medynn and their gene bank/editing tech. They want a place to live — perhaps our asteroid belt. We, the Contact Team, agree that these are our people and we’ll take them in. The Vorta may follow them — if we could detect them, then the Vorta could, but did they? The newcomers have artificial gravity, a weak magnetic and a weak gravitic tractor/pressor beam.

Doctor's Log 2x03

Home at last. Nothing seems to have seriously gone wrong in the past month. We do have a better idea where the planet’s volcanos are – there’s two near Bayside, a supervolcano near Desert Bloom’s cluster of cities, and a hot spot deep under the ocean.

Better work on the core samples confirms the basics – a 500 year cycle of diminished normal pollen and higher volcanic activity – we’re mid-cycle there. Purple prions every 1,000 years, black crystals every 100 years, with a large release every 500 years that adversely affects normal plants, but not the purple pollen. Over time, Adams’ spiderberry seed is very, very slowly germinating.

Various meetings about trying to sieve the dust out over the oceans by cloud seeding, checking filters on the fusion plants and robo fac, and various protective measures. Many of the AI are going back to orbit, those down here will be sealed in bioplas. Many of the drones are being shut down to avoid contamination. More manual labor for the rest of us. Adams is rolling up his sleeves. I’ll head out to the fields and make sure my clinic time includes the inevitable sunburns, strains, and blisters this is going to cause.

Adams has had RUBY scanning near space objects, particularly orbit crossing ones. It seems that the belt tends to lose objects, mostly towards Primus, but a few in our direction. Oceana’s moonlet is likely an asteroid from the belt. (No dust patterns on Ocean, not even fragments.)

The big news is that she’s found some sort of anomaly in deep space in the direction of Aute. An anomaly with the same characteristics showed up twice between here and Aute – estimated distance 60 and 50 light years. AUD1 thinks it could be an object passing through space faster than the speed of light. It doesn’t match the records from the aliens who visited Aute – something new. There was an old ISP project for FLT, but it was abandoned because of the energy needs. Never got to testing. But this is vaguely consistent with the theory. If it is a ship, it’ll be here in six months. Once the data is confirmed, we’ll advise Oceana. Two months later, we find it again, roughly 10 light years closer. We think it’ll appear in the gap between the stars in four month – two weeks go get there by Pegasus.

I was just starting to get used to the planet as some sort of ancient terraforming device, now we’ve got something new coming from Aute. Good news? Bad news? Just more complications?

AUD1 and Breeze talk about teleporting. It isn’t faster than light, they fold space. The world is round, but the plane of existence is flat. The prime connects to a second Tikket to create a tunnel – they have to know where the ends are in relation to other things, AUD1 thinks he could teach Breeze to use GPS.

Ozone has integrated more into the colony. His Echoes are a familiar sight. He’s not a volcanologist, but he has some general knowledge of volcanos. He’s interested in the crystals, but doesn’t seem to see them as anything special. The spiderberry bush is more interesting, but Tikket don’t travel to glaciers – too cold.
He hears word from Coral Bloom about new colonies, and stress in the Hives because they are no longer of one mind. He expects Desert Bloom to take steps to enforce harmony. Coral Bloom expects war. We may be targets. We are unknowns, and the Tikket don’t like unknowns. Mostly, we need to stall.

This turns to a long discussion about the groves of Memory Trees. We talk with the Fisher Kings about “buying” a suitable grove site that they were developing so that Coral Bloom can start making her own grove and we can watch the process at close hand. They want some help with lumberjacking and removing trees that compete with their tamed murder maples to expand their nest. This gives me a chance to spend time with their shaman on ethno-botany.

The Tikket store skills and knowledge in the groves, which the Queens extract and implant into their young, which then hatch as adults with all the skills/knowledge they are expected to need. Losing access to the groves would cripple a nest. The nest modems access, but there’s no index.

The giant shrooms are sending/storing modem/routers and also physical defense for the groves. Each nest has its own modem of a Tikket telepath enshrouded in fungus. Since he has been enshrouded in fungus, Ozone feels like he’s part of something ancient, older than the Hives. (Adams wants to teach him meditation; he’ll borrow the skill from Tara.) The fungus, he says, was found by a Queen, who started incorporating it into their diets. A form of it creates the cocoons. The Queen cocoons enhance their psi and support their life, as well as enhancing their connection to the data trees. The Tikket haven’t studied the purple prion much. They don’t know how it works, but it improves species survivability. It finds weaknesses in a genetic code and plugs them. In Tikket, it affects their ability to be born fully educated.

At breakfast, Aiken agreed to work with the Tikket to transfer their data to our computers. It’s going to be slow, but it is a start.

Doctor's Log 2x02 (Catching up a bit)

Casualties are treated and stable. The Tikket are headed back to their homes. Senate sent us to take the Helios to sample the volcano’s ash cloud before prevailing winds bring it over Aurora. While Marak and Marcus modify Helios for high-altitudes (we want to be above the ash, not in it), the rest of us get boot camp on glacier survival and taking ice cores. Senate finally green-lit Vicinius’ proposal to take ice cores and get a better idea what the purple prion pollen and the black vampire crystals have been doing. Given the altitude and temperatures, we’ll living in suits or shelter. Still, I need to bone up on high-altitude medicine.
Helios is light on lab space, but we could get samples from the ash. Found what we expected – carbon, silica, fine glass (fused silica) – and black vampire crystals in “L” shapes. We tried applying energy – (sunlight, electricity) – they fuse into larger/thicker L shapes. We put the whole lot into freezers to go back to Vicinius’ labs at House Vitarium.

First look at the South Continent. It’s colder than the others and more mountainous. Satellites show at least three large mammals – something seal-like, something bear-like, and something goat-like. There’s the usual bugaloo and some sort of semi-aquatic elephant with flippers that lives at sea and on land. Once we’re closer we can take samples by drone. More green plants than we’re used to.

At the landing site, there’s bushes. On a glacier. 15’ diameter crystal bushes with 6” blue insects living in them and some sort of web or mesh in the ice. Helios dusts off as soon as we’re out the cargo bay doors. G’tard puts us to work setting up camp – there’s a storm to our east. Then we take the ATV to pester the plants. This thing is weird, but it isn’t trying to kill us. The spiders react when we touch the web, but don’t attack. AUD1 says the tree has scents like the Tikket and Prairie Bugs, but the scents don’t make sense to him.
Adams grabbed a spider – the others ran to the other side of the bush to hide. So far so good. When he got a dozen feet from the bush, the spider got agitated and began spewing acid. Ate right through the container and straight down. Marak managed to tag it with a tracker before it vanished into the ice. Adams grabbed another one. I euthanized it for dissection – weird internal structures – it has a seed within it. Somebody dubbed it a Spiderberry.

Lost the next day to the storm and digging out on and off in the night. Marak strained himself, but nothing that some rest and anti-inflammatories can’t handle. The stress seems to be getting to Marner (one of the miners with us). [Patient notes attached, medical encryption] Finally, the weather clears and we get some cores.

Just in time for another storm. We’re better prepared this time. The tagged Spiderberry stopped about 25’ down. Looking at our cores – sure enough a layer of purple and black at about that level. The black crystals are a different pattern, a blocky “8”. Looks like black crystal layers every 100 years or so, purple pollen every 1,000. Some changes in the atmosphere over time – that’s going to need better labs and tests than we have.
Adams suggests digging for more purple/black so he can try to grow the dissected Spiderberry seed. Either he or Marak asked Janus for an orbital scan. Marak did some work on the data. Crap. The crustals are forming layers, patterns, over and over again, in the ice. Letters are 1/8 to 1/2" tall aligned with the planet magnosphere. A single letter (or portion of one) every 1,000 years when the pollen and crystals coincide, laid down for tens of thousands of years. Janus looks at ice and glaciers across the world – this is the most complete but there are fragments everywhere.

That settles it – the planet is being actively terraformed and has ben for a long, long time. Senate is going to send out another expedition to take more samples, but we’ve got to get ours home to Vicinius to study.
I’m starting to miss the days when the TIkket were the weirdest thing we faced.

Eleni. Mom’s headed to Aurora to take care of some people. I’m safe and well, but I may be away a bit longer. Give Dad a hug for me.

[Log begins]

It was supposed to be a briefing. A planning session. We’d sit around and discuss the problem for a while. Getting back to exploring after two years of settling in. It’s P3, the Purple Pollen Prion. It’s affecting 100% of the Mict, all in the same way. Humans about 18-20% in two predictable ways – either reduced need for sleep [Link to Patient Zero file] or extra body hair [reducing some of the adverse UV effects]. So far it’s been beneficial, but that could change at any time.

I was expecting to talk about Vicinius’ proposals for ice core samples, for tree ring comparisons, and requests to Coral Bloom and the Desert Queens for help in getting samples from the P3 corals and desert plants. Maybe even dust off that Tikkit archeology proposal. But we’d barely gotten started when word came – we’d lost contact with the Island of Understanding. A few minutes later, Ozone confirmed, he’d lost contact with Speaker, but Speaker was at least alive. AUD1 estimates 40 sentients on the ground – Mict, Human, AI, Tikket, and both kinds of ants.

The team was already there, but for Vicinius and Marcus, enroute on the Helios from Bayside. So we started packing the on-call emergency medical team into a Pegasus along with supplies to treat Tikket and Ants. A Janus came over the horizon as we were stuffing gear into the cargo hold – a volcanic eruption on a nearby island. But that doesn’t make sense – Vulcan isn’t here to be angry with us. This planet isn’t an egg nearing hatching. The why doesn’t matter as much as the search and recovery. Looks from the early images like flooding. We saw that in some of the big shakes back home. We need to get in and out fast in case this wasn’t the biggest shock.

We land on the highest ground – a hillock to the east of the flooded area. Even on a quick pass, it’s bad. The main domes are in chest-deep water. Two of our buildings are half-collapsed. Adams was able to get comms working to N’yet, who was trying to get into one of our buildings. The rest of the team heads for the western hillock to set up a field station.

Marak sets off south towards a group of golden ants by a pond. I take a medic towards the diplomatic dome. Adams heads for N’yet and our damaged buildings.

Marak finds one golden ant dead, acid burned. I remember this – it’s the volcanic gasses in the water, makes it acidic. The other ants are unhurt and can contact two Echoes. Marak tell AUD1 heads towards the south of the main dome.

The diplomatic dome is silent. The medic and I find bodies, human and Tikket floating on the water. First Bloom is dead. So are several of the princesses. And several of our team. The only life I can find is one of the Mict, and he’s badly hurt – concussion, internal swelling. I can buy him some time, but it is too soon to focus on any one patient. I have to send him to the field station with the Medic. We’ve got another doctor who is as good as I am, probably better, with humans and MIct. He can handle this. I confirm the dead are, indeed, dead and begin to move on.

Adams helps N’yet into one house. George Marcus (the colony’s firstborn) is trapped there with his nanny bot. It takes them some time to carve a path through the ruins, but he’s safe and unhurt. His parents were last seen in the Greenhouse Dome. It’s north of the diplomatic dome and probably took even more damage. AUD1 says the Tikket made underground spaces and tunnels – maybe some safe air pockets are left.

AUD1 finds Speaker. Scorpion Bane and Ocean Breeze are using a table to float, with Speaker on top of it. The Tikket don’t float and they breathe thru their abdomens. It’s a minor miracle they’re alive. I wade to them. Speaker was an unlikely biological construct from the start – it’s no surprise that he’s badly hurt. Internal bleeding from what passes for his spleen. Again, the best I can do is stabilize for now while AUD1 and the rallying survivors pull the table to the west and the aid station. The Queens are hurt, but ambulatory. We’ve still got over a dozen missing. I head toward the Tikket domes.

Marak heads into the Greenhouse dome in a Lumberjack’s exo-skel and sends an Eagle drone to look for survivors in the down-wash to the south. It finds a few – Adams can reach it more easy that the rest of us by going around the worst flooding.

Marak finds most of our survivors – human, AI, and Tikket. The fungal walls in the cellars are keeping the water out of two labs, but the halls and floor above them are flooded. Marak sends for some survival bubbles from the Pegasus – he can cut a small slit in the walls, push in the domes, have everyone stuff themselves into them and drag them out before the labs flood. Yes, they’ll lose their samples, but they’ll live. He finds George Marcus’ father, but his mother, Breena, is still missing. There’s no one in the other Tikket domes, but there are tunnels underneath. AUD1 starts searching.

Adams finds more dead Tikket and a group of badly wounded ants. He can stabilize them for now, but the chitin damage is serious. AUD1 has some ideas about creating casts – that’s for another day. The best he can do is cut up his own armor to patch them for now. I’m about to head that way when I get the call from AUD1. He’s found Breena in an air pocket in a tunnel and sends me her biomonitor feed. I mutter a prayer to absent gods, again, and slog as fast as I can through the water. Marak joins me while AUD1 clears the rest of the tunnels.

The injuries are all internal. She’s not already infected with whatever’s been washed in by the sea. But she can’t be moved without surgery and she’s going to die in this tunnel if I don’t do something. I can’t get a portable surgery down to her – I can’t even make a sterile operating field ankle deep in mud. For all the miracles that Aute’ medicine offers – it’s useless here. I can do this with psi. I’ve dissected enough lab rats and mice this way to be glad that the Hunted have no gods here, but this is the first time with a sentient.
As I settle into the mud, we get another shock, lesser this time. Marak takes watch. Best chance she has is if I concentrate fully on this. Hopefully, the tunnel will hold.

The Ren said that the Hoth sung Aute and its many peoples to life. When I sense someone’s aura, I hear it as much as I see it. Each person has an orchestra inside them. In her case, it’s as if half the brass section quit in a huff, stomped on a few instruments, and began to walk out. I’m simultaneously trying to keep the rest of the orchestra performing, wire and glue the instruments back together, and bagger those lazy bums back to their jobs. It feels like forever. Marak says it’s been an hour. She’ll live. Another prayer, of thanks, that I don’t have to tell a boy that his mother is gone.

The bone tiredness vanishes with a shot of a stim. Marak carries her out in a bubble to the aid station. The Mict is nearly done. I turn to Speaker. Easier, this time, he’s not so badly hurt and I’ve heard his quirky, improvised song since I cut him out of his hatching pod.

We pack the wounded into the Pegasus. Off those alive when the Pegasus landed, we lost two – one of the fire ants and one of the golden ants that Adams tried to save. Marak and AUD1 will wait for the last of the fire ants to dig themselves out of their burrow. The Pegasus can drop us off at Bayside and return with a team to recover the dead and the most critical tech before that Volcano blows again.

And we are inbound for Aurora. The dead – four blooms, including Crystal Black (1st Bloom of Desert Bloom), Golden Sand’s echo, three of our human diplomats, and at least six ants. Wounded (non-ambulatory): Speaker, Breena, one of the Mict, and two ants. The rest need to be checked, and some minor care.

Doctor's Log 1x21 (coda to end of Season 1)

[Events take place in Parallel to 1×20 (Elections)] [standard personal encryption]

Meanwhile, while all the politics were going on, people were doing what they do. Starting families. Having kids. We’ve had our first Mict births, clones with some genetic mixing. House of Children has been slowly adding the local environment to the artificial wombs, with success.

The first survivor has had some breathing issues, but is otherwise adapting. Congratulations to the parents. This is a wonderful sign. The second Mict child has fewer breathing issues. Things are looking good for adapting to Terra Nueva.

[Encrypted portion, standard medical encryption]
Oddly, the baby has some new structures — muscle bio-batteries like the dino boars. On Aute, the Mict had bursts of speed that were mana dependent. The new structure may replicate that ability. It must be a product of the purple pollen. Maybe it is interacting with some genetic predisposition of the Mict. I’m not head of medicine or the treating pediatrician — decision made so far to watch and study, but not worry anyone.

The second survivor has similar adaptions and better lung capacity. Dr. Vicinius and I are studying it — I find his attitude a bit disturbing. No bedside manner. Looking at the conception and post-birth genetics, the prion is making changes in utero. So far, positive ones, and the same in both. That’s weird and concerning. [end encryption]

Just as I was starting to roll up my sleeves with Dr. Vicinius to look at the adaptations, Gala called me in. Marcus is taking the Pegasus out to maneuver the medium asteroid. It’s a long trip and he needs a medic. I did point out I was in the middle of research and was reminded, pointedly, that there are over 100 other doctors who are better physicians, better surgeons, and better geneticists than I am. But I’m the best for providing emergency medical care in a low resource environment. She’s not wrong, but it stings. I can keep in touch with Vicinius via comms, light delay won’t be bad, and I’ll probably have plenty of down-time to think.

The annoyance is forgotten when we clear atmosphere. I love space — there’s something so starkly beautiful about it. I could spend hours just watching Terra Nueva from up here. The first asteroid “catch” had gone well, with minor damage to Pegasus’ cargo claw. This asteroid is much bigger. With AUD1’s help, the second catch goes well. It is on track to go into orbit. The big one is enroute, all 4 1/2 miles of stone and metal.

While I’m on standby up here, the third survivor is born.

[Encrypted portion] And again, consistent changes, in utero. Ozone says the TIkkit knew that the prion does this. They were once more like the ants, but they went underground and consciously embraced the fungus and the changes the prion made to them. We talk about archeology to find early, pre-change Tikkit ruins — likely in the desert which is highly dangerous, even with our Tech.

When I get home, I stop by the incubator for our oldest human child, George Marcus. It has been a long time since I heard a baby’s aura. This one is healthy, sharp, clear. The lungs look good — a bit larger that the parents, but that seems normal. There’s a tiny odd note — an antigen I’ve only seen once — a House Willowbark farmer. Flagged to the treating pediatrician and to Dr. Vicinius, we don’t know what it does.

Vicinius asked Adams about plant mutations. Agrotech, of course, has full records and yes, there have been more beneficent mutation than seems statistically probable. Something is manipulating us. Beneficial so far, but what happens if that changes.
[end encryption]

Another Mict birth goes smoothly. Marak gets himself married at Bayside, with Capt. Gunthar officiating. There’s some unrest that he’s married both Jeannie and Lyra, but no violence.

The last asteroid nudge begins— it is really hard to describe how big this is — something nearly 5 miles long and 2 miles wide shouldn’t be moving. It looks like a small mountain, but it is hurtling towards our new home at frightening speed. Fortunately, it will go into orbit cleanly.

When we get back, Coral Bloom’s echo (the healer we met first) arrived along with Fertile Bloom, Sleepytime Bloom, and Water Lilly Bloom. I can’t spend much time with them (security issues), but I can set up a hospital tour and can show off some of our tech. One of the things I find most limiting about sensing auras is that I have to rely on memory, I can’t store the image like a normal medical scan. They’ve got the same limits. Being able to look at readings over time — not something they’ve done.

I’ve got a project planned to “apprentice” myself to the Fisher King refugee shaman. From what Adam and Marak have been arguing about, many of the delegates see the Fisher Kings as savages with nothing to offer. We’ve seen the two shaman apprentices here — going there lets us see what they know. And I could really use a break from the politics. Field work sounds great, especially if I can wrangle Cailean as part of the team. Jeannie says Willowbark will support it and send one of their ethnobotanists. Vicininus is behind it too if he can include one of those “lesser xenologists” he runs ragged. So I’ve got my team, just need approval.

If all goes well, with all the weddings in the air, it is time. I’m hoping Marcus will stand in for my brother at the handfasting. He agrees. Given Marak’s innovative marriage contract, I’m inspired. I ask Marcus about a mutual adoption as siblings. I miss having a family. He gives it some thought and we bring the papers to Weston. (I think he may start avoiding our team soon.)

Doctor's Log 1x20

Now that things are settled, for now, with Desert Bloom, it is time for the Colony to settle its own affairs. The Council is not fully happy with Counselor Bahiti’s work – if Coral Bloom is to be part of our Nest, then she and the three other Eastern Queens wants to observe the Constitutional debates. Seems reasonable to me, but Adams is going to have to stop joking about extreme responses in public.

Bayside and Aurora are expanding. Aurora has several satellite camps for crafts, mining, and logging. Marak and I have been talking about a small, short-range aerial transport for 2-3 people so we can get a doctor out to the isolated camps quickly, or get a patient back here for treatment fast. The historical databases have ideas, but as usual, resources are an issue. I’ll mention it to Drs. Willowbrook and Gala – let them fight for it with the Council. Counselor Bahiti and Vincinus are staying at Bayside for now to work on set-up for his house.

The issues at hand are the shape and scope of the legislature, citizenship and voting rights, basic protected rights and liberties, the sentient AIs’ status, and relations with Tikket and Fisher Kings. The mood on our arrival is low. Desert Bloom agreed to return their geothermal venting to its original condition as a show of good faith – but it will take a while for the rainy season to clear. There’s mud, more mud, and exciting new species of fungus and mold. Of course Dr. Gala assigned me to clinic duty. The Fisher Kings and Ozone warn that one of the new mosses is a sopsoporific. [Flag to House Willowbark for medical uses; Flag to Vigils as safety issue] They also warn that another mold is very aggressive and corrosive. [Flag to Medical, Vigils, and Agrotech (re the food vats)] I’ve put reminders on the entrances to Ozone’s area to be sure to decontaminate before entering – I’m concerned about something contaminating his fungus.

Clinic duty isn’t so bad. It is refreshingly normal patient care. Many of the workers with the most downside time are at Bayside, helping them get set-up. Aurora has a plethora of newly defrosted workers who haven’t yet learned how Terra Nueva works – this place kills and eats the complacent and the unwary. I’ve also got to figure out how to get people to come in early for care. I wonder if Bugallo nectar can be made into lollypops.

Marcus is taking advantage of the mud for sports. Ground rules are no crippling injuries, no major organ damage – cuts, scrapes, sprains, can be fixed if it helps morale. I’ll see if I can get a team together from the hospital – we could use the stress relief. Adams is teaching boxing – more civilized violence, I guess.

I went with Adams and Marcus to a couple of the political events. Got into a heated discussion with Ansi Hammadi about citizenship, voting, and whether to create a citizenship requirement for service to the colony. I don’t know why she got under my skin – it’s going to be generations before we can afford to have any idle able-bodied colonists, social pressures should be enough to dissuade laziness. I don’t have much use for idleness from anyone. Like Marcus, I’m usually more frustrated with Suits who don’t understand field work and by Celebs with more money than sense than by somebody who’s poor and working hard to get by.

The other bit that got under my skin was Hammadi’s idea of a work requirement for care, and asking whether I’d let someone starve if they were able-bodied but refused to work. I guess I’m reacting to the team arguments over defenses against the Tikkit and feeling like I need to prove I’m not soft or weak. I saw starving people back home; there’s not enough of anything during a disaster. Triage – deciding who gets what scarce resources was, and is, part of my job. In scarcity, yes, I have and can let someone go without so someone more likely to survive has a chance. In time of plenty … I ignored beggars and the homeless on the streets just like everyone else back home. Here, though, if we have beggars they won’t be strangers, they’ll be someone you know. I think I could tell someone able-bodied but stubborn that I can find them work – mopping the hospital floor if need be – for food, and not just give a handout.

Julia Lucinta Septima also had an election event. She’s a more polished speaker than Hammadi. She and Adams sparred politely over AI rights. Much fewer sparks then when Lucinta tangled with Marak and AUD1 earlier this year. It’s been quiet with AUD1 staying on the Island of Understanding and Marak too busy with his many, many projects. Marcus caught someone trying to interfere by slipping extra drinks to he, Adams, and I and warned him off. I don’t know the guy, but we’ll find out who he is. Probably just politics. Lucinta was a minor noble on Aute and a lawyer here. (Marcus likes lawyers even less than Suits and Squints.) She wants to keep a place for hereditary nobility. I don’t see it. On Aute, the nobles were, demonstrably, kin to the Gods. The highest of them had divine blessings, curses, destinies, and prophecies. But nobody with any measurable amount of divine or magical anything could come with us – we’re all just human (and Mict, and AIs). We’ll need to earn what we get, not inherit it.

I heard from Marak that Adams met with Lyra after Lucinta’s talk to try to persuade her to trust him and not to stir trouble during the election. She told him about Marak’s proposal. I’m told he was speechless. Marak later said that Jeannie and Lyra agreed – I hope for the best for them all.

Finally, there was Dulin’s event at Agritech. I love the new building, but I’m concerned about a House-specific arcology and fragmenting our very tiny society. They’ve been growing plants from home. I haven’t had a strawberry in … feels like forever. Marcus spotted Vivian moving in the crowd towards Adams and Dulin and gave the head’s up. More politics? This could be dangerous – folks are tech enough about Tikkit telepathy, don’t need them getting paranoid about our own people.

At Psi Core breakfast, we talked a bit about my psi genetics project, particularly in light of a conversation with Marak about psi and his hopes for children. I think we need, at least, to try to keep, at least, telepathy, healing, psi sniffing, and anti-psi in the next generation, if for no other reason than to understand and deal with the Tikkit. The other stuff is important, but if I have to start somewhere, I’ll start there. Nobody wants a gestalt.

Akila and Vivian sniped at each other about what role psi may play and about policing misuse of psi. Somebody, don’t recall who, sniped that I had nothing to worry about – nobody’s afraid of healers. I shouldn’t have done it – I used TK to crush a small glass (nothing I couldn’t have done by hand, just no risk of getting a cut) – I’m not as harmless as it may look; we’re all in this together.

I talked to Vivian afterwards – she won’t talk about who hired her, but she might be open to counterbidding or insurance. I also suggested she make the Council and First Contact team off-limits – if she picks up classified info it might be dangerous. I’m trying, tho not always, succeeding, at staying out of the politics. A doctor should be neutral. Vivian thinks I may need to get more involved. Jeannie’s better at the politics. Justinius is the Vigils’ rep on the Constitutional Committee. They can handle this.

So I spent a while sitting on the beach when I was at Bayside thinking. Sunset lasts forever around here.

What do I want? I want my children to carry on my abilities and to be able to use them without a second though of someone freaking out. I grew up scared that I was going to slip up and get dragged off to a Gestalt, lynched by a mob, fired, or get the psis in my family in trouble. Having gone public, the weight of Atlas is off my shoulders. I don’t want anyone to have to bear that weight again.

I want my children to live in peace, to explore this amazing new world and the space beyond. I hope we can leave humanity’s worst traits behind. I hope they know how to cope with disaster, how to defend themselves, how to take care of themselves and their neighbors. I hope they never have to use that knowledge.

It’ll be a while, if ever, before we have Aute’s frivolities. Weirdly, I sometimes miss the stupid stuff – celebrity gossip, fashion trends, even cat holos. I couldn’t stand it back home, but it was a sign of how much we had. We won’t have that for a while, but I want them to have stuff like the comfort foods my parents made, chocolate, Aute fruits, maybe someday coffee. I want them to have time for music, art, and reading for fun, not just working for survival.

I want them to have the rights I take as a given and the values I hold.

Doctor's Log 1x19

History classes made this sort of thing sound so easy, so inevitable. Everybody gets together and out comes a treaty without any of the messy uncertainties and confusion. I wonder about the untold stories of the early Empire and the Compact – were things as messy then? I also wonder what stories they’ll tell of us a generation or two down the line – assuming peace holds, that is.

Counselor Bahiti did a fine job negotiating a truce – all the more impressive for negotiations in a language neither of us speak as native, with concepts from a Stone Age civilization. We’ve got a prototype scent translator, but it doesn’t have the vocabulary for detailed discussions.

It began with Desert Bloom loudly accepting our invitation – using a psionic transmitter dropped from a height. The Council had to scrabble to explain this to the Colony, since the response was loudly in the heads of everyone near Speaker. Ozone’s echos have shown little interest in leaving the dome, but we probably should let people know they are here.

[Medical note: still need to work on dosage for the miracle fish pills, Virgil’s procedure ultimately successful, but more stressful than expected. At least he’s cured.]

From surveys, we saw the Tikkit arrive – with a group of fire ants and more golden ants. They set up some domes. We decide to go in with equal numbers, the diplomatic team, some Mict, and several civil engineers to set up shelters. As we set up camp, we are met by two of the desert ants with a container of Buggalo honey. We offer a gift in return – something sweet from our stocks. Adams is an excellent cook and the Buggaloo glaze works well with steak vine, but I just can’t deal with much of that stuff.

The Tikkit don’t like open spaces – the golden ants form a tunnel for them to move into the meeting dome. There are five queens – last daughters of Desert Bloom, each with a vest of unknown power. The elder and senior has a black flower and calls herself First Bloom of Desert Bloom. The Bringer of Harmony, of Peace, offers us a chance to become part of her hive and to help us grow. (As we later realize, at times Desert Bloom may be possessing First Bloom to talk directly to us.) Counselor Bahiti respectfully declines – it is a generous offer, but we seek to be friends and equals, to work with her Hive, but not as part of it.

At lunch, we break. The Tikkit don’t seem to have the concept of two hives that are not essentially one. How do we convey this idea? While we are talking two of the golden ants approach discretely. They are allies of the queens from the southernmost end of the central mountains – Golden Sand and Desert Sand. In public, the golden ants are servants, but in private they work with the Tikkit to deal with the dangers of the desert. They and their queens are worried about fighting, either between us and the Tikkit, or a fracturing of their Hive because of us. We talk about options and proposals.

Counselor Bahiti eventually returns to negotiations with a proposal for two groups – their Hive and our Nest, separate and competative, but not at war. (This does leave Coral Bloom in an odd spot.) The division is based on continents. We agree to keep delegates on this island (The Island of Understanding) to study from and learn from each other. While that happens, we try not to take any actions that might be misunderstood or cause conflict. Sadly, none of us will be able to stay – we know too much about the Colony’s defenses and contingency plans.

So peace for now – about the best result we could realistically expect. Now we need to settle our own affairs – get through the elections and figure out how we are all going to work together. I’m hoping for some time for my own projects, including treatment protocols for Tikkit with our technology. Ozone is our guest – it’s our job to keep him healthy and safe.

Doctor's Log 1x18, Standard Personal Encryption

Final checks before leaving quarantine are nearly done. No changes. A couple of weeks in close quarters did not helping anyone’s nerves. The only consensus we could come to was that we need to try to talk to Desert Bloom. If diplomacy fails, it could be bad.

We left Coral Bloom as soon as we could. Only a few minor injuries from the fight with the Fire Ants. None of the Tikkit were hurt. They’ll question the surviving Ants. Breeze, CB’s consort, seems nervous and ready to see us go. It took a while to get Coral Bloom and Siri back from their sanctuary; Breeze and his Echos had to recover their strength. Tikkit teleportation is powerful, but has its limits.

Coral Bloom 6 thinks the attack was Desert Bloom’s reaction to Coral Bloom no longer sending information to the fungal net about us and our settlements. The Desert Bloom does not have a representative in Coral Bloom’s nest, but the Tikkit are a telepathic race; keeping secrets is difficult. Desert Bloom has connections here, but she probably didn’t know specifically that we were here. There was no warning, but CB and her echoes knew that contacting us would be against DB’s desires. No warning was needed.

The Tikkit do not fight each other, normally. But when Desert Bloom first took power, she used teleportation to send Fire Ants to rebellious nests to take out rivals queens and controllers and replace them with her own. This attacks was directed at CB’s controller’s dome and at Ozone. Not sure if CB was an intended target, but would be an obvious third choice. In the more recent past, DB outwaited young queens who either comply or die of old age. CB is on a different continent, further from DB and the Fire Ants.

The tank was built to explore the surface world. It can be connected to a controller like Ozone to be directed, and has limited intelligence on its own. In effect, a non-volitional AI. It was breed in a lab, not by a Queen.

When Coral Bloom returned, and while Breeze was resting to send us directly to the surface, we asked her about how the Tikkit perceive us.

Coral Bloom’s nest became aware of us on Landing Day. We were very noisy and disturbed her Fisher King scouts. We had disturbed their project on the plains (Grassland), but it was not being monitored and did not have any controllers. Once the Tikkit became aware of us, the Community of Queens wanted more information. Coral Bloom was assigned to gather information. They collected DNA, blood samples, and trash. They found that we didn’t fit this world’s life forms. That caused a lot of consternation among the queens. They were also concerned about our alliance with the Fisher Kings, who they knew make good scouts.

DB created a virus to sicken our kind and to test our skills. They expected us to overcome it, but they wanted to see how we would do it. Ozone was chosen to lead the study of us. He broke protocol and contacted us (when we found the trash-bug nest). We were too intriguing to pass up. CB likes Ozone, but not DB. They had been working on cloning one of us to study, but Ozone urged CB to use the data to create Speaker. CB limited, and then stopped sharing data about us. DB attacked the last Fisher King nest in her area because of our presence. They didn’t talk to us because that’s not their way – they barely leave their hives.

With a bit of a wobble, Breeze sent us to the surface. The warp sensation is different from being teleported – more like an elevator ride, less gut twisting. Pegasus was there soon, and we were enroute home. No sign of anything amiss – no parasites, infections, or other surprises. But we’ll spend a while in quarantine anyway.

And so the discussion ensues. We can’t talk directly to the Desert Ants. They are probably short-range psis, like the Fire Ants, but we don’t have any full-telepaths other than Speaker. And we don’t know if they know Tikket, which AUD1 is working on. So that’s out.

We can try to send a message to Desert Bloom. We hash it out in Fisher King, audio only, to be sent with some low-tech message buoys, one to be dropped at the big lake near DB’s mountains, which is ringed with the Tikkit filter plants.

We are the Star People.
Desert Bloom attacked us with a sickness.
We want to avoid war.
We want to talk to Desert Bloom
Meet us here (physical map, 1st Landing Beach)
In two weeks (using their dating)
At Dawn

And if diplomacy fails? DB doesn’t show, or the diplomatic team is attacked, what then. We’ve got two recommendations to the Council, one for a precisely targeted strike around the newest data center – threaten it, but don’t damage it. The other is more drastic, and would require CB’s cooperation.

Mid-way through the arguments and without warning, refugees arrive – Ozone and two of his Echos appear in quarantine. (They can target using Speaker.) CB is moving to a hive that DB doesn’t know about, yet. Ozone was sent to us to keep him safe. CB found out from the Fire Ant Captain that their goal was to acquire Ozone (not knowing he’d become a fungal brain), take down the connection to the tree net (apparently a living modem created by a strong telepath merged into a fungal brain), and kill CB. Their plan was to evacuate using the Terror Tank if successful. DB had started her contingency plans once CB broke contact. CB is hoping to recruit her mother to her cause, her mother hasn’t had her life extended yet.

Dr. Willowbrook and I are starting an in-depth examination of Ozone. If he’s here, he’s our responsibility to keep healthy. This isn’t going to be easy – the Tikket have an open circulatory system – surgery would be tricky. The Echos care for Ozone; they even digest food for him. The Council doesn’t want to make his visit public yet – politics. I’ll see if we can introduce him to the other psis. It must be strange to be here, away from his hive. We can provide some company.

So we wait. In two weeks, we’ll be on a beach and we’ll see if we can reach at least neutrality with Desert Bloom. I miss the Gods. They never talked to me, but they talked to the Emperor and the priests. You could trust that things would turn out ok. You could ask for help after you’d done all you could. Sometimes, I hear, they helped. And that’s gone. For better or worse, we’ve been kicked out of the family house, have to make our own decisions, and live with the results.

Doctor's Log 1x17, Personal, Standard Encryption

A crash course in Tikkit culture.
We spend a week learning about the Tikkit. [Insert training montage] Marcus continues to be far more nervous than I’ve seen him to date, but he won’t say why.
The Tikkit are born in groups of seven – one prime and six echos. The queen manipulates genetic probability to make the prime the strongest. Echos share a telepathic link with their prime, but not each other. The prime is linked to all six echos. Range unknown, at least planetary. Tikkit are born as adults with all the knowledge they need for their roles.
The Queen produces all the eggs. She is born with a limited supply of eggs and will run out in old age. [Queen’s natural life span is 50-70 years.] A queen’s first consort is one of her mother’s echos. Her second consort is presumably her own son and controls the Hive. The third consort controls satellite parts of the hive.
The Tikkit value harmony. They compete in groups in synchronized dance. They share psi energy with the controllers and queens in enhanced dreams. The Queen has a scent-garden for pleasure. Speaker is intrigued by our computers and by the notion of a childhood. The Tikkit find our disharmony distasteful – we don’t know our places. We agree to a “talking stick” plan for one verbal speaker at a time – kibbitzing to go to subvocal channels. Marcus puts us all on his tac-net program, and we agree to a couple of code-phrases for “crap has hit the fan” and “something is poking my mindshield”.p.

The Handmaiden
Marcus flew us to an otherwise ordinary lake. We’re bringing N’yet, a Mict ordinance expert with a well-developed sense of smell. Marcus also packed along a couple of Mict teams, a second pilot, and a medic. They won’t come underground to extract us, but they’ll cover us if we need to retreat.
The lake is lined with elongated lily pads that pull underwater when we fly over – living bio filters, Speaker says, not dangerous to anything our size. It would make a bad first impression to damage them, so we land mid-lake. Soon thereafter a living submarine surfaces, carrying Coral Bloom 6 (dubbed “Handmaiden”.) She speaks Ancle telepathically to Marak, Marcus, and Virgil, who relay to the rest of us. She is not entirely pleased with the idea of a diplomatic meeting – Desert Bloom isn’t going to like it. She has a belt with some unrecognizable devices, but otherwise no clothing. She asks to scan us.
I’ve never seen another healer at work. Do I get that still when I’m concentrating? She’s slower at it. We all pass, but for Virgil. His intestinal flora is out of harmony. I agree, but it is part of treatment for a chronic condition and is not contagious. She lets me scan her in return. I think I’m getting the hang of this, but I need some time to understand it all. [Dictated subfile of aura impressions appended.]
The inside of the sub-fish is fleshy, warm, with an odd but not unpleasant smell. Marcus continues to be edgy. He’s staying oddly close to Counselor Bahiti and he’s made it clear she’s priority if things hit the fan. He wasn’t like this when we went into the woods with Counselor Talbot, so it isn’t that she’s a Counselor. She’s at large, not a head of house, so that’s not it. He’s married and she’s engaged to Virgil, so that’s not it either. She’s not pregnant, I’d have noticed. <sigh> Whatever it is, I trust he’s got a good reason for not telling us. Maybe something he doesn’t want to risk the Tikkit reading. I’ve got a lifetime’s experience living a secret, let’s see if I can help his behavior look more normal.
Handmaiden wants to know what we want. I’ve got the stick. We want to co-exist with the Tikkit. We want to avoid another attack. It is a large world. We use different parts of it. We do not need to be friends to be neighbors. I explain the short version of how we came here, that our world was visited by others who live in the stars, the universe is full of life.
Handmaiden is concerned abut Desert Bloom’s reaction. She united the Tikkit about two centuries ago. She controls the secret to longevity and gives it to sub-queens who are loyal to her vision and who give her eggs and psi energy. It is normal for younger queens to test and be rebellious, but when they get old they either conform or die of old age. Desert Bloom’s echos are all dead, as are those of the queens she is extending. We ask Handmaiden about when they died, a theory that Desert Bloom can only sustain a certain number of lives at a time. This will take time to figure out.
Desert Bloom is afraid of us because we are a challenge – we and our devices can overcome their challenges. She’s not wrong. Marak takes the stick and points out our interactions with the Fisher Kings – we could overwhelm them and do not. We have helped them with little expectation of benefit in return. Marak asks if they could clone eggs – they could, but it is not right.
Coral Bloom wants another path. She finds some of Desert Blooms ideas not moral.

Settlement
After a few hours, we get to the first Tikkit town. It is a manufacturing center. They build with bricks made of fungus and something akin to bioplas. They also make something leather-like from fungus. The manufacturing domes would not hurt us, but they will note our passage. They mine metals and crystals for use in the devices – those mimic or enchance psi-powers – using biominers. The black sand does not bother them. They have some technology – conveyor belts for example. Some of the buildings have living wire, it conducts the psi energy. There is also an arena for synchronized dancing. They use geothermal power and living batteries. They use turbines to move air and water.
There are prairie bugs everywhere, cleaning trash and debris. There are Tikkit from the builder and farmer castes. A couple of them show us around. [Dictated subfile of aura impressions appended.]
Handmaiden tells us that the fire ants were modified by Desert Bloom from the ants in the desert. They are telepathic at touch range and can understand Tikkit. Handmaiden says they may share an ancestry with the Tikket.

Queen’s Hive
Another couple of hours in the living submarine brings us to the capitol. The Queen has her own walled compound with three domes. Ozone has a separated lab. His prime has been made into a living computer, sessile in his own fungal nest. Like the pod we found, but much larger. I thank him for our invitation. He’s been cut off from the tree-network so Desert Bloom will not learn what he knows about us. The science area is full of odd devices – none of them make sense. It has a dome that would stun us if we were not with one of Ozone’s echoes. They aren’t willing to show us where the devices are made.
Finally we are off to meet Coral Bloom Prime. She will trade bodies with her first echo so she can interact with us. Before we can enter, her first and sixth echoes want to make sure we mean no ill.
Six asks us each a question, I go last, monitoring the others as they are asked for any sign of the chemical changes we think mean influence.
To Marek: “What are your intentions?” (Marak vouched for AUD1)
To Marcus: “Are you a threat?” “I am the best friend and the worst enemy you could have.”
To Virgil: Is your hive or your caste more important? (His hive.)
To me – this was hard – letting someone else into my mind is weird, letting someone deeper in my thoughts … – hard but necessary. “How much value do you place on life?” It was a puzzling question – as opposed to what? Is she asking about life vs. aging and dying? Is she asking whether I would kill or die for my hive? “Protecting sentient life is what I do.”
Not surprisingly, they don’t want us to come in armed. I release the battery/magazine and drop the pistol into a bag. Marak and Virgil do likewise. Marcus hedges a bit, then gives up his gear to N’yet. The Tikkit offer to let us bring our gear in, but Marcus would prefer to have N’yet cover us. (There are a couple of Tikkit standing by near another dome.)
Counselor Bahiti and Coral Bloom do most of the talking. Desert Bloom, we’re told, was once a great queen. She has lived past her time and is stuck in the ways of the past. She’s lost her vision and her ability to build the future. She asks more than Desert Bloom is willing to give. The Tikkit retreated to the caves to escape the harshness of the desert and found the fungus that let them bloom. She has become fearful. Coral Bloom wants more for my children than fear and the sterileness of what has become her world.
The counselor asks about danger to us in helping her. Yes, but there is danger if we do not. Perhaps an alliance between us and the other younger queens of this continent could deter her from bothering us. The biggest challenges are that she controls the secret of longevity and the tree data network. Without access to the trees, their living computers will die and are also not as efficient as the trees. That we may be able to help with, but we’d need to know much more about how the trees store and retrieve data.
Coral Bloom shows us a map of the western continent’s caves. They are mostly along and under the mountains. She has five major queens she is sustaining. There are 8 lesser queens who she influences. There are paths between the various chambers.
Seri is just beginning to ask about Desert Bloom’s military capacity when N’yet’s bioscannner flashes. Her pulse and blood pressure just spiked. She sends her data. A huge bug, nothing we’ve seen before has just appeared. And behind it what Coral Bloom’s consort says is a teleportation tunnel full of fire ants. Ah, heck.

Battle for the Hive
N’yet shoots the terror-tank with Marcus’ big gun. Lots of chitin blows off, but it seems unharmed. That’s not good at all. The consort can send the Queen and one other away. Marcus agrees to trust it to send Seri to safety. I’ll cover her — don’t need Marcus attention diverted. With what, I’m not sure. I’m down to harsh language and a couple of laser scalpels. I can look like enough of a threat to distract at least. I also have a bad, desperate idea – Marak has geeko gloves. There’s a psi-power cable leading out of this dome over the tank. I’m wiling to go and try to cut it so it falls on the critter, but it would take too long to trade gear with Marak. Off he climbs. That leaves me covering Seri and Virgil using Marak’s portable house to protect the eggs. Marcus is running for the pile of weapons by N’yet.
It does something. N’yet and two Tikkit fall. Marcus dives through the dome and grabs his rifle, sending three rounds into the beast. That does it. It falls. There are hundreds of dead formation bugs inside, killed before they could launch. Ozone is under attack two. A second tunnel and more ants there. AUD1 flies to the rescue, but he’s slow. I look at Virgil. If I’m going to suggest bad, desperate stuff to Marak, I ought to be willing to do it myself. The Consort can send us to Ozone. Virgil leaves first, I grab the bag of pistols and follow.
Having one’s atoms scattered and reassembled…hard on .. well, the whole body. I’ll check later to make sure everything is back where it started. Virgil’s already re-orieneted and grabbed a pistol. There’s a bunch of fire ants and a leader with a rod attacking the dome. The prairie bugs are defending, but not doing much to the bugs. Fortunately, they are vulnerable to electro-lasers. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of them. Nine, Virgil says enthusiastically.
The tactical display sits in the corner of my goggles. We shoot ants. They are stunned, but get up again. AUD1 stuns several and plows into one, but it damages him in return. He retreats to distract them as best he can. Virgil and I keep engaging, but they are getting up as fast as we can stun them, and they have numbers. Their claw attacks skitters off the bioplas along with a hot wind. Not good. I stun their leader and steal his wand – fortunately it’s light. OK, I can figure this out. Let’s see – a mental push – here – and…something. Force, heat, I’m not sure. From the wand, not me, and the ant in front of me falls, leaking ichor from multiple cracks in its chitin. It’s not dead, but not moving much. Powerful. But the pistol is more reliable. We keep shooting. Eventually the numbers catch up and an ant gets a solid bite on and through my armor. I fall back thru the wall. That’s bad, but fixable. But I’ve left Virgil alone. He gets bit too, not as badly, then falls back. I can fix it, but seconds in a fight feel like hours. Fortunately the wall is holding against the ants’ heat aura and the cavalry is arriving.
N’yet and Marcus keep them from damaging a second dome where there’s a data connection to the tree-network. Marcus at one point sends N’yet to us, engaging two ants alone. (I point out that he’d be furious if any of us took that kind of risk alone.) Marak runs along the data cables over the river, arriving in time to push an ant into the stun wall as I finish healing Virgil. N’yet makes short work of the surviving ants. We’ve got a couple of prisoners and it’s quiet.

Doctor's Log 1x16, Personal, Standard Encryption

Home for a few weeks from the asteroids. Marak inadvertently started a political mess – he asked the Governor of Oceana to sign his house charter to make it a multi-planet one, which apparently makes it an Imperial charter. Meanwhile, the Council decided to give seats on the new Constitutional Council to the Imperially chartered houses – Agro-Tech, ISP, House of Children, and House of Vigils. There was some discussion about giving the Vigils a non-voting role because the house is so small. Marak was going to trade his seat for making sure the Vigils got a vote and some trade plans he’s been working on with Oceana, but AUD1 persuaded him to keep his vote. Adams is running for the open Aurora seat along with Lorne.

Marak’s suggestion to send a Pegasus to Oceana along with a passenger pod of any hibernation pod techs that want to go has been ok’d. Marak also got an ok for regular cargo pod transfers between the colonies. This is a great thing, I have concerns about the colonies growing apart.

Bayside is getting more settled. I’ve been starting to plan my move. Legate Guthar has been courting Vicinius to open House Vitarum there. I need to ask him about inviting Speaker over – AUD1 may want to come to study the Fisher Kings colony, assuming Cailean’s diplomatic mission to the nearer Fisher King leader is successful. He’s the closest to being able to understand Tikkit (ThinkerBug) scent language, and I’m the best xeno-doc we have. (OK, I may be the only xeno-doc we’ve got.) Project Orpheus has moved to human trials, double-blind, results to be reviewed by Vicinius and I.

Speaker has made great progress in learning our language. We know more about the Tikkit. The scout eagle has been watching the formation bugs deliberately starve the refugee’s old grove. Then floating gas bags rose from the swamps to kill and petrify the bark. Finally, we had an alert. A large sea serpent beached itself and disgorged nearly a score of ants. The ants move in groups of five, with a leader that has a rod that project heat (pyrokenisis) to destroy the undergrowth around the maple grove. (At a guess, they are a small gestalt. I don’t know enough about pyrokensis to know how much power it takes to generate heat at a 100’ range.) They attacked the eagle, with the help of the formation bugs, but no damage to it. We attacked the formation bugs, but not the ants. So far, we’re trying to avoid an armed conflict.

Speaker says the Tikkit use the serpents for transport under the sea and through underground rivers. Vicinius got that covetous look in his eyes as did Marak. They bio-engineered the fire ants – they are intelligent, but loyal to Desert Bloom. The desert ants have cryokensis powers. Neither seems to have physical TK. The fire ants were securing the area around the maple grove and recognized eagle as a threat, so they drove it off. (They underestimate eagle’s magnification ability and our satellite surveillance capacity.) The trees are being transformed into something that can store memory – a biological server farm. The ants and the giant mobile mushrooms (Speaker says they are like firewalls) protect the groves to protect the data. The groves are interlinked by a fungal network. Vicinius has that covetous look again.

Yes, I know the maples are not sentient, but there’s something about the cold efficiency of driving off the Fisher Kings to starve their trees to convert to their own resources and using specifically designed viruses to eliminate the big reptile at Grassland that is chilling.

The Tikkit seem to be eusocial – arranged in groups that each have a specific function in their home – the queens are the only psi-healers and can bio-engineer with psi powers. They make intelligent life. Builders make non-intelligent tools like the formation bugs. We know that the consorts can teleport things, like Speaker’s pod. At a guess, the scientists like Ozone have long-range telepathy abilities to keep in contact with their little analysis pods. When I gave Speaker a polished rock from the asteroid mission, it was curious, but said that the Tikkit don’t study the stars.

Desert Bloom is not the first, but is the eldest queen. She is very long-lived but at a cost of reduced fertility – her daughters provide her children. Speaker’s queen, Coral Bloom, is outside Desert Bloom’s influence, but is dependent on her. Speaker sent me an image, the queens are within a nest of fungus that enhances their abilities. Grassland was apparently a military bioweapons lab that we stumbled across. They use buggalo for food and resources.

Speaker does not have information about Desert Bloom’s intentions or enough information to make an educated guess. We need to at least reach a truce. The Council agrees. We are going to escort Councilor Bahiti to meet Coral Bloom. Adams will be staying behind to politic. The rest of us are taking a crash-course in Tikkit culture to prepare. Marcus is on edge, and it isn’t about the Helios. I’ve tossed a couple of leading questions his way, but no response. Whatever it is, it’s private and concerning.

We also joined Marak on the uneventful maiden flight of Helios – it is a lovely ship. Vicinius used the occasion to propose to Bahiti. Marak has been spending a lot of time with Delanne and Lyra. Adams and Kawit seems to be on the verge of a formal marriage alliance. I’d better get moving, after we survive the Tikkit.

Doctor's Log 1x15, Standard Medical Encryption, contains patient data

We have a few tons of minerals and ores from the Asteroid Belt in Pegasus 3. It should reduce the bottleneck a bit, maybe give us some breathing room. Several large rocks are on their way here, and will arrive in a few months. One should be big enough for Vicinius’ heirloom humanity project. Moving some manufacturing to orbit might protect Terra Neuva’s environment – we’ve been given a chance to apply lessons learned too late on Aute.

We left Marcus and his wife to their honeymoon, and AUD1 to work with Speaker. Marak and Adams think this will be a milk run, I’m along only because the Pegasus has limited medical resources if something does go drastically wrong. The wedding, what I could see of it from Containment’s video, was lovely and made me a bit nostalgic for home. Vicinius named one of his nitrogen fixing bacterium for them. Fortunately, I finished the portrait I was working on before Speaker showed up – I used to take acid-free Aute paper for granted, now I only have about ¾ of my sketch pad left and I doubt paper is on anyone’s priority list.

Adams and Marek have been busy with their political plans. The Janus 3 councilor elections will happen while we’re gone. Both have been working on proposals for the new council charter.
Acceleration is much softer than the Janus 3 mission. I think I like microgravity, at least as a change from Terra Nueva. And there is nothing actually trying to kill or eat us out here. There are dangers for the careless or unwary, but not active agency behind them. Without AUD1 and Marcus, it is like the first days on Terra Nueva, or it would be if we didn’t have a small team of asteroid miners with us. They seem happy to get off Terra Nueva, both for the gravity, and the limited tech we can use. Practically back to picks and shovels, Lodestone complained.

Dr. Gala reminded me about overdue charts, training vids, and other administrative barnacles that I can fill the quiet hours with. And I am getting them slowly done. Counselors Kawit and Bahiti are monitoring the mice in project Orpheus. I also have my own projects with me – reviewing the data and video from Grassland to figure out why the large reptiles there merit Claw’s designer virus and my own research on psionics, and particularly psi genetics. Vicinius and I have talked and debated long into the nights about the practicalities and ethics of making sure that what psi we have “breeds true”. Psi Core has preserved some skills. I don’t want my descendants to have to fumble in the dark with things I’ve figure out on my own. Psi skills are not something we can teach with vids or VR.

I’ve also been pondering Wells, the sniper who shot Lyra. He was a troubled man who lost several team-mates on Janus 3. He is in deep-freeze while the Council decides what to do with him. I don’t know what is just, but I do want to talk to the psychiatry team when we get back about whether he could be successfully treated. We are too few to waste a life, even a troubled one. Wells had tamed a minidon. For now Cailean has it and Pteri, while I’m away.

Our first task is getting in touch with Oceana and lobbing a care package to them. We’ve set up another relay, so we’re only out of touch for half their orbit, or so. Cailean mentioned the other aliens that ISP negotiated with on Aute, I wonder if someone picked this system because the radio noise of our civilization will be drowned out by our star for a while, long enough for us to get civilization back on its feet.

Oceana has been wiped clean of life – maybe there’s some traces in the deep ocean vents, but otherwise it is bare. Marak’s been busy talking with them. He wants to set up more permanent mining out here with trade in both directions. They asked us to send a rock with some biological precursors their way – Adams was thrilled to have that project. It distracts him from throwing up when we hit freefall. I should have stocked more anti-nausea meds – my stomachs been doing occasional rolls, but he’s had the worst of it by far. I think he’s run out of solids to throw up, no, out.

In and among the asteroids, we’ve got something weird. Crystal structures. Maybe related to the crystal trees/coral. Maybe related to the black vampire sand. Gregory, our astronomer, has put every sensor we have on them. Vicinus has been trying radio and low power com laser pulses. No response. Even here, the system is full of unexpected life. Mining went well enough. I even got into a vac suit once, well tethered, to set foot on an asteroid. I’ve got a couple of pebbles left over from the mining as curios. There’s plenty of opportunity here, even after stretching our rations to the bone, Lodestone’s mining team has to be practically dragged home. Speaking of which, there’s something odd in Lodestone’s ISP calcium preserving nano – it’s building up in his joints. Could fix it with surgery, but the deposits will come back if we can’t fix the nano. Note to self to flag this to Medical when we get back, see if anyone else is being affected.

Enroute between one patch and another, Marak got a heads-up from the diagnostics. Build-up on the hull. Fine dust, probably from a crystal structure, adhering to the hull. We got it off before it built up. Not related to the black sand. Prion-like. Maybe related to the purple sand? Vicinius has yet another item on his long, long list.
It is beautiful out here, although I miss the gas giants of Aute. The planets of our system are small and rocky. I would have said lifeless, but with the crystals among the asteroids, who knows what Oceana will find deep in its moon, or we will find when we finally get around to exploring the other planets of our system. As we approach Terra Nueva, hold full of metals, it is beginning to feel more like home.

Upon the Sending of the First Care Package

This Rocket Gift is for you, our family on the other side of this new world system. Was the Del-San Tree spared the asteroid – along with Janus III – so that we could send it and these gifts to you?

Even so it is clearly not enough.

With the Tree we send hope, biologicals and proto-pharmaceuticals. The rescue of the Janus III included the opportunity to develop these new strains of ancient aurea. They should grow in their new homes well (raising instructions have been included) and help provide important nutrients and vitamins for the Aute diet. We will develop better ones, especially if you cite specific needs.

We also included key new developments from the labs on and around Terra Nueva. May they help someday.

If you have specific needs or requests, send them right away. We will get to work. You got the raw hand of Fate. Amazing. Auto’s spirit runs deep within you all. And you are not alone.